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SLICE OF THE PAST
Dark street
Jaideep Mazumdar | July 28, 2012
Kolkata's Park Street was once both fun and fashionable. But, as a new
film shows, the good-life street has fallen on bad days.
Kolkata's Park Street was the first fun street this side of the
Suez. It can boast of many firsts - the subcontinent's first
departmental store, the first ice-cream parlour, the first soda
fountain, the first restaurants offering live entertainment, all these
and more stood proudly on this street where only the city's
well-heeled trod. It was, in fact, more than just a street. This was
where Indians got their first taste of fine dining, of cabarets and
can-can dancers and of the good life - but that was till the swinging
sixties. Naxalism, the flight of capital, militant trade unionism and
the migration of many communities like theAnglo-Indians, Parsis, Jews
and Armenians from Kolkata led to the city losing its cosmopolitan
character and dealt a death blow to the good life of Park
Street. Today, despite efforts to revive it, the street is a pale
shadow of its former self. Park Street's epitaph was written when it
was rechristened 'Mother Teresa Sarani' a few years ago.
This state is vividly portrayed in Life In Park Street, which released
last weekend. In this movie starring thespian Soumitra Chatterjee,
Park Street is depicted in a sleazy light and as the fief of an
underworld don. Unfortunately, this isn't very far from reality. Many
of the restaurants on Park Street where dinner jackets were de rigueur
are, as Olympian Leslie Claudius tells TOI-Crest, "frequented by the
riff-raff and shady people". "Park Street used to be washed every
morning. Elegant and genteel ladies and gentlemen clad in formals
would get down from their cars to dine and make merry in the
restaurants, " recalls Deepak Purie of Trincas, one of the oldest
restaurants here and the only one that still has live music and a
crooner.
Foodie and musician Nondon Bagchi remembers the old times: "Usha Uthup
and Biddu Appaya debuted at Trincas and Mary Wilson (Australia's best
jazz vocalist now) used to perform there. VJ Luke Kenny's mother used
to perform at Blue Fox where Louis Banks, Pam Crain and Braz Gonsalves
used to set the evenings on fire. Moulin Rouge was the first to fly in
can-can dancers from Europe and hosted the first cabarets". Mocambo
was independent India's first nightclub where Pam Crain debuted. "A
German architect designed the interiors and my grandfather got an
Italian chef flown down to design the menu. A British fashion designer
made the costumes for Crain - a gown flared at the bottom that gave
her a mermaid-like look. The dancefloor was reinforced Belgian glass
with coloured lights below, " says Mocambo owner Siddharth Kothari,
who also owns the iconic Peter Cat and Bar-B-Q restaurants on Park
Street.
Writer Mani Shankar Mukherjee recalls that no company would hold its
board meeting on a Tuesday since Sky Room used to be closed on that
day and it was a ritual for outstation directors to lunch or dine
there! Sky Room would parcel its signature prawn cocktails to Delhi
for Indira Gandhi while Fish Florentines and Chicken Sicillienes from
Mocambo were Nehru's favourites. Octogenarian Flower Silliman, one of
Kolkata's few remaining Jews, recalls shopping at Park Street's Hall &
Anderson, the first departmental store outside Europe. "Park Street
epitomised fine living. People from Bombay, Delhi and even Lahore
would fly in to Calcutta to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve at
Park Street's restaurants which would have special dinners and balls
on these occasions, " she recalls.
A group of activists under the banner of Society for Park Street
Rejuvenation has been striving to restore the street's lost glory, but
it has been a largely disappointing exercise. Apart from restoring a
couple of mansions and holding a Park Street carnival during the
Christmas-New Year's week, the society has been able to do little
else, primarily because it has taken on an impossible task. "The
character of Park Street has changed and I doubt if we can recreate
the past, " says historian Barun De, who used to live in a mansion on
Park Street. In Life In Park Street, Soumitra Chatterjee, disgusted by
its degeneration, vows never to return to Park Street. Flower
Silliman, too, doesn't go there anymore, and nor do many of Kolkata's
swish set for whom Park Street was a prime evening destination. It is
just another thoroughfare now.
http://www.timescrest.com/life/dark-street-8411
MICHAEL STEPHEN
Dark street
Jaideep Mazumdar | July 28, 2012
Kolkata's Park Street was once both fun and fashionable. But, as a new
film shows, the good-life street has fallen on bad days.
Kolkata's Park Street was the first fun street this side of the
Suez. It can boast of many firsts - the subcontinent's first
departmental store, the first ice-cream parlour, the first soda
fountain, the first restaurants offering live entertainment, all these
and more stood proudly on this street where only the city's
well-heeled trod. It was, in fact, more than just a street. This was
where Indians got their first taste of fine dining, of cabarets and
can-can dancers and of the good life - but that was till the swinging
sixties. Naxalism, the flight of capital, militant trade unionism and
the migration of many communities like theAnglo-Indians, Parsis, Jews
and Armenians from Kolkata led to the city losing its cosmopolitan
character and dealt a death blow to the good life of Park
Street. Today, despite efforts to revive it, the street is a pale
shadow of its former self. Park Street's epitaph was written when it
was rechristened 'Mother Teresa Sarani' a few years ago.
This state is vividly portrayed in Life In Park Street, which released
last weekend. In this movie starring thespian Soumitra Chatterjee,
Park Street is depicted in a sleazy light and as the fief of an
underworld don. Unfortunately, this isn't very far from reality. Many
of the restaurants on Park Street where dinner jackets were de rigueur
are, as Olympian Leslie Claudius tells TOI-Crest, "frequented by the
riff-raff and shady people". "Park Street used to be washed every
morning. Elegant and genteel ladies and gentlemen clad in formals
would get down from their cars to dine and make merry in the
restaurants, " recalls Deepak Purie of Trincas, one of the oldest
restaurants here and the only one that still has live music and a
crooner.
Foodie and musician Nondon Bagchi remembers the old times: "Usha Uthup
and Biddu Appaya debuted at Trincas and Mary Wilson (Australia's best
jazz vocalist now) used to perform there. VJ Luke Kenny's mother used
to perform at Blue Fox where Louis Banks, Pam Crain and Braz Gonsalves
used to set the evenings on fire. Moulin Rouge was the first to fly in
can-can dancers from Europe and hosted the first cabarets". Mocambo
was independent India's first nightclub where Pam Crain debuted. "A
German architect designed the interiors and my grandfather got an
Italian chef flown down to design the menu. A British fashion designer
made the costumes for Crain - a gown flared at the bottom that gave
her a mermaid-like look. The dancefloor was reinforced Belgian glass
with coloured lights below, " says Mocambo owner Siddharth Kothari,
who also owns the iconic Peter Cat and Bar-B-Q restaurants on Park
Street.
Writer Mani Shankar Mukherjee recalls that no company would hold its
board meeting on a Tuesday since Sky Room used to be closed on that
day and it was a ritual for outstation directors to lunch or dine
there! Sky Room would parcel its signature prawn cocktails to Delhi
for Indira Gandhi while Fish Florentines and Chicken Sicillienes from
Mocambo were Nehru's favourites. Octogenarian Flower Silliman, one of
Kolkata's few remaining Jews, recalls shopping at Park Street's Hall &
Anderson, the first departmental store outside Europe. "Park Street
epitomised fine living. People from Bombay, Delhi and even Lahore
would fly in to Calcutta to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve at
Park Street's restaurants which would have special dinners and balls
on these occasions, " she recalls.
A group of activists under the banner of Society for Park Street
Rejuvenation has been striving to restore the street's lost glory, but
it has been a largely disappointing exercise. Apart from restoring a
couple of mansions and holding a Park Street carnival during the
Christmas-New Year's week, the society has been able to do little
else, primarily because it has taken on an impossible task. "The
character of Park Street has changed and I doubt if we can recreate
the past, " says historian Barun De, who used to live in a mansion on
Park Street. In Life In Park Street, Soumitra Chatterjee, disgusted by
its degeneration, vows never to return to Park Street. Flower
Silliman, too, doesn't go there anymore, and nor do many of Kolkata's
swish set for whom Park Street was a prime evening destination. It is
just another thoroughfare now.
http://www.timescrest.com/life/dark-street-8411
MICHAEL STEPHEN